military law, the body of law concerned with the maintenance of discipline in the armed forces.

Every state requires a code of laws and regulations for the raising, maintenance, and administration of its armed forces, all of which may be considered the field of military law. The term, however, is generally confined to disciplinary military law as defined above—i.e., that part of the code that aims at and sanctions the maintenance of discipline in the armed forces. In the past this was also known by the name of martial law, a term that now has the meaning of military enforcement of order upon a civil population either in occupied territory or in time of disorder.

Members of armed forces do not cease under modern conditions to have duties as citizens and as human beings. All systems of military law thus must aim to ensure that the soldier is in no way enabled to escape the obligations of his country’s ordinary law or of international law as recognized in various conventions.

Historical development

The object of the disciplinary code is to ensure that the will of the commander is put into effect. Military law therefore traces its origins to the prerogative power of rulers. In Rome, just as a sector of civil law developed from the imperium of the magistrates, so did military law derive from the imperium of those same magistrates in their capacity as commanders of the military forces. The Roman historian Tacitus indicates that military justice in the 1st century ce was somewhat rough-and-ready and heavy-handed and varied much with the individual commander. But it became more formalized 400 years later in the Digest and Codex of the emperor Justinian. With the rise of the kingdoms of the Middle Ages, the maintenance of discipline was enforced by ordinances or articles of war issued by the sovereign or by a commander authorized by him at the beginning of each campaign. The earliest now extant are those of the English king Richard I in a charter of 1189 for the government of those going to the Holy Land.

With mercenary armies drawn from many nations in the wars of the 16th and 17th centuries, each national contingent tended to apply the articles of the supreme commander according to its own rules of procedure. The articles of war of Maurice of Nassau, prince of Orange, and Gustav II Adolf had a considerable influence on the national commanders who served under them, when they came to command elsewhere. In the English Civil Wars, the ordinances of the royalist and the parliamentary commanders were thus in the most part literally the same and in the next reign formed the basis of Prince Rupert’s code of 1672. The famed discipline of Cromwell’s army was due not to any improved code but to the fact that the articles were rigorously enforced. On the continent of Europe, the articles of Gustav Adolf continued to be followed until supplanted by the codification of the 19th century, which established throughout those countries a generally similar system that, with revision and amendments, continues to this day.

With the introduction of a standing army in England in 1689, Parliament aimed to prevent this force coming under complete control of the sovereign by a series of mutiny acts, normally passed annually, to which the prerogative articles were subordinate. By a statute of 1717 the power to make articles was embodied in the act. In the United States in 1775 and again in 1806, articles of war were adopted that were modeled upon the mutiny acts and articles then in force in Great Britain. In the British army, the articles of war were replaced in 1881 by an annually renewed Army Act (reformed in 1955), although they continued in the Royal Navy until 1957. In the United States they were replaced by the Uniform Code of Military Justice in 1951.

Persons subject to military law

The jurisdiction of military law is not necessarily confined to offenses injurious to the discipline of the forces committed by members of those forces. It extends in various countries in varying degrees to all offenses committed by members of the forces and to offenses injurious to discipline committed by persons who are not members of those forces.

Military personnel

In countries in which an obligation to military service exists, soldiers who fail to answer their initial call-up or report for duty are liable to military jurisdiction for such offenses as desertion or self-mutilation either because the military code makes such offenses applicable to them as a class of civilians (as in Belgium, France, Italy, and Israel) or because under the act introducing national service they are deemed to be enlisted on the dispatch of a calling-up notice (as was the case in Great Britain when conscription was in force). They continue to be liable for such offenses, even if not otherwise subject to military law, during authorized absence from the conscripted service or temporary reserve service. Reservists are also subject (as in Italy) to military jurisdiction for such offenses as treason, communicating with foreign countries, and revelation of official secrets. In Belgium, released soldiers remain liable for rebellion or offenses against superiors committed within one year of their release.

Civilians may become subject to military jurisdiction in any number of ways. In Italy and Turkey, for example, treason or rebellion can be dealt with under the military code, and in Norway breaches by a civilian of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their additional Protocols of 1977 are dealt with under military law. In other countries, civilians who instigate or participate in military crimes may themselves be triable under military law. In a number of countries, civilians within a war zone or theatre of active operations, or in conditions defined as a “state of siege,” can come under military jurisdiction for offenses similar to those mentioned above—or even completely under military jurisdiction, as in Argentina.

In other countries, only civilians associated with the armed forces may be triable under service law. In Israel, for example, civilians who are employed by the army, or who have been provided with army weapons, are subject to military law, as are those held in army custody. Under British military law, civilians accompanying armed forces stationed in a foreign country (including families of soldiers as well as British civilians working for or with the services) are triable under offenses against the good order of the military community. In the United States, however, civilians—even those forming part of a service community abroad—cannot in peacetime be tried at all under the military process, though they may become subject to military jurisdiction in time of war. Austria and Spain are among countries in which no civilian can be liable to military jurisdiction.

Click anywhere inside the article to add text or insert superscripts, subscripts, and special characters.
You can also highlight a section and use the tools in this bar to modify existing content:

Add links to related Britannica articles!
You can double-click any word or highlight a word or phrase in the text below and then select an article from the search box.
Or, simply highlight a word or phrase in the article, then enter the article name or term you'd like to link to in the search box below, and select from the list of results.

Note: we do not allow links to external resources in editor.
Please click the Web sites link for this article to add citations for
external Web sites.